Geoff Andrews examines the parallels between the Conservative candidate for mayor of London and the former Italian prime minister.

Italian journalist friends, perhaps tired of explaining the latest twists in the saga of Silvio Berlusconi, have been keen to draw my attention to the shortcomings and peculiarities of our own politicians.

Take Boris Johnson for example.

He has been described to me by one Italian journalist as the nearest British equivalent to Silvio Berlusconi.

Of course this comparison doesn't hold up for many reasons. For one thing, Berlusconi is a uniquely Italian phenomenon, whose path to power was driven by a long-running political crisis in Italy, a defunct political class and crucially aided by his enormous wealth and power as the owner of much of Italy's media.

It is difficult to imagine that a politician with such power could come to office in any other Western European country.

Moreover his darker side, of alleged mafia involvement, numerous court cases on charges of bribery, corruption and sex with an underage prostitute, are beyond anything Johnson has been accused of. Italy's recent history and political characteristics have little common with Britain.

However, there are nevertheless some features that Boris shares with Silvio.

One is his habit of breaking the rules and conventions of national politics and indeed making a virtue of it.

In Berlusconi's case this was reflected in attacks on magistrates, gaffes on the European stage (once likening a German Social Democrat MEP to an SS Kommandant and making Frau Merkel wait while he took a phone call) and later flaunting his sexual indiscretions, which seemed to boost rather than dent his poll ratings at home.

Interestingly, Boris Johnson, along with Nicholas Farrell, is one of the few British journalists to have ever interviewed Berlusconi. The subsequent article, published in the Spectator, contained remarks from Berlusconi such as "Mussolini never killed anyone" and that magistrates were mentally unstable.

Despite criticism from foreign journalists, such outspoken statements initially had no adverse effects on many ordinary Italians who tolerated, in some cases, admired him, for it.

Boris has also been outspoken and gaffe-prone on many occasions.

Controversially, in 2004 he accused Liverpudlians of "wallowing" in their "victim status", for which he was required to apologise by then Conservative Party leader Michael Howard. 

He has also had extra-marital affairs but there is little evidence that his philandering has done any harm to his political standing amongst the electorate, despite his sacking as Shadow Arts Minister by Michael Howard after knowledge of his long-standing affair with Petronella Wyatt became public.

According to Sonia Purnell, who has just published her biography of the unpredictable Mayor of London, Johnson maintained that "whom he slept with had no bearing on his fitness for political office and he believed that revelations of his philandering were motivated by 'snivelling and short-sighted' attitudes and jealousy".*

This comment was typical of Berlusconi's reaction to press interest in his private life but is still unusual in British politics where the ability of politicians to carry out their public roles still seem conditioned for many by an uncontroversial private life.

This may yet change if Johnson's long-suffering wife Marina becomes tired of his indiscretions.

Even in Italy, it was arguably when Berlusconi's wife Veronica Lario made public her anger at her husband's infatuation of younger women that the sequence of events which led to his departure were set in place.

Another important similarity is that, like Silvio, Boris does not have any clear ideology.

This might be surprising given his desire to experiment with different schemes and his willingness to espouse strong opinions on most subjects. Yet a close look at his policy priorities as Mayor suggest a moveable feast; attracting, for example, claims of being both pro and anti-environment, and both encouraging and annoying the city's cyclists at regular intervals. 

While firmly on the right on economic questions, he is clearly more liberal on other issues than many of his fellow conservatives.

Like Berlusconi, it is Johnson's populism, and in particular the use of his celebrity status to popular effect, that marks him out as an ambitious contemporary politician.

Populism, as we know, often claims to offer radical change, yet in reality it often leads to the entrenchment of power and the defence of the status quo. This is what happened in the case of Berlusconi. It may yet lead to Johnson's downfall.

It may be that both men are so fixed on their own ambitions that conventions, ideologies and policy agendas inevitably get left behind.

Sonia Purnell quotes Johnson as admitting that he supported David Cameron's Conservative leadership campaign out of "cynical self-interest" and his career since then, which saw him first win the conservative candidacy to stand for London's mayor and then defeat Ken Livingstone in the 2007 election itself, demonstrate more of this unwavering ambition.

He has become the most likely successor and potentially biggest threat to David Cameron from within his own party.

On balance then, Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (to give his full name) is not the British answer to Berlusconi. Rather his style of leadership, his pursuit of power and status as a celebrity politician puts put him in a similar category to others around the world in the media-driven age when many political parties and conventional politicians have lost their way.

Geoff Andrews is Senior Lecturer in Politics at The Open University and the author of Not a Normal Country: Italy After Berlusconi  

*Sonia Purnell: Just Boris - A Tale of Blond Ambition; Aurum Press, 2011 

Mark J Smith  examines the prospects for Romney’s challenge to Obama after the  battles of the Republican selection process.

In his speech at Pawaukee, Mitt Romney shifted his focus from the battle with competing candidates to taking on the incumbent President. He wanted to signal that the GOP race is over and with Santorum’s withdrawal it probably is. On 3rd April, Romney won the Wisconsin, Maryland and District of Columbia primaries with substantial poll leads, gathering up all but 9 of the 91 delegates awarded. This brought Romney to well over half the delegates he needs to secure the Republican Party nomination.

In January 2012, I highlighted how Romney seemed to be facing difficulties gaining the  acceptance of Republican grass roots support in his long running candidacy campaign. I also indicated that while he is the front runner in terms of delegates he has often been second place in the polls to a variety of other insurgent candidates which came and went. This seemed in large part to be a result of his earlier inability to connect with the conservative and often Christian base of the GOP.

The latest insurgent candidacies by Newt Gingrich, winner of two states on the Southeast coast, and Rick Santorum winning eleven states with the same number of second place finishes, picking up significant support across the rural counties in the Mid-West and the South. Ron Paul remains an outlier but has polled well in individualist states, running second place in seven states plus the District of Columbia.

While Romney has racked up many wins in individual states and consolidated his delegate lead, he has remained second place or worse in many conservative heartlands, especially in the mid-West down to the Southern states where religious affiliation is still a factor that seems to matter. Even in these states, Romney has done well in urban areas whereas Gingrich early on and more often Santorum now have picked up rural and suburban GOP voters.

Winning Wisconsin with 44% of primary voters suggests that he now overcoming those reservations. One phrase I’ve heard often in primary races (often attributed to Bill Clinton) is that ‘Democrats need to fall in love with their candidate, Republicans need to fall in line’, and Romney’s campaign is banking on that being the case in 2012. There is now a broader acceptance of the inevitability of Romney’s turn and among GOP supporters that some changes in values and policy advocacy are acceptable, and a sign of maturity as politicians life experiences change. 

GOP concern is less about money but that the base may be demoralised and lack the energy necessary for a successful national campaign against the incumbent President. Unfortunately, Romney’s campaign to acquire the reluctant acceptance of the base infused with Tea Party values, has led him into a series of standpoints that may inhibit his ability to contest the election itself. In addition, his own side have primed the public for a series of questions about his authenticity as he tries to attack the Democrat Presidency for adopting virtually the same health scheme he negotiated as the Governor of Massachusetts. His defence is merely that it was a state rather a national decision.

Other potentially damaging effects may occur as a result of GOP debates on reproductive rights although that does not explain the worrying gender gap in April polls. According to the latest Washington Post/ABC News Poll, overall Obama has a 19% lead over Romney among women. Romney polls well with women without college education but particularly badly with educated women in work. White women are also more likely to vote GOP than Hispanic and African American women.

This means that Romney receives only a 34% approval rating on ‘addressing women’s issues’. Even though Romney tried to steer clear of controversy on this, the tone of the GOP debate and perhaps his muted  response, have had a negative effect. Also, despite the Republican focus on opposing ‘Obamacare’, the gender gap appears partly tied to more positive approval for Obama on healthcare.

Until Santorum’s dramatic suspension of the campaign, the race seemed destined for a battle in Pennsylvania on 24th April. Romney needed a knock-out blow in Santorum’s home state and where he was a Senator for 12 years. For other candidates, this record may have been something to emphasise – a two term senator can claim to have experience at home and abroad, but this has been downplayed – for fear of being labelled a Washington Belt insider. However, Santorum found he could not reach out beyond the conservative base.

Romney's challenge is very different. While Santorum's departure,  without an endorsement, means he has secured the nomination, he has more to do to win over the core of his own party and more still to prise votes away from Obama.

• Mitt Romney profile 

Alan Shipman argues that while business leaders welcomed the Budget's tax changes, their reluctance to invest could undermine the chancellor who delivered them

Post-Budget debate has inevitably focused on how tax changes will affect different households, especially whether top earners' lower tax-rate will really be offset by lessened avoidance and a higher stamp duty, and whether the claw-back from taxpaying pensioners is a fair way to take more lower-income households out of tax.

But the impact on businesses could be even more important in determining the Budget's success, as any more delay in reviving their investment could stall the growth of income on which the chancellor's revenue projections rest.

The UK has yet to regain its pre-recession level of national output. If the growth rate doesn't quickly rebound at least to its 2.0-2.5% long-term trend, any household income gains will quickly be wiped out by another round of public-service and benefit cuts to rescue the deficit reduction plan.

In the year since George Osborne proclaimed "the march of the makers" in his 2011 Budget speech, UK manufacturing output has risen by less than 0.5%, and manufacturing employment has dropped 1.5% to 2.5 million.

Take the money and wait

GlaxoSmithKline gave the chancellor some sweeter medicine the morning after his 2012 speech, announcing that the corporation tax cuts for innovation-generated​ profits starting next year (via the "patent box") tipped the balance when deciding to expand in Ulverston, Irvine and Montrose.

But companies' recruitment intentions have declined since mid-2011 according to the quarterly surveys of the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development, whose chief economist points out that the Budget forecasts have now downgraded investment in favour of consumption growth – standing "rebalancing" on its head – and improved the unemployment outlook only by changing the calculation method.

The Budget's most visible boost to business is the reduction in corporate tax from 26% to 24% in April 2012, 23% in April 2014 and 22% in April 2015.

Gordon Brown became the "20p chancellor" when he announced a fall in the basic personal tax rate to 20% in 2008, and Osborne seems determined to do the same for company tax if he can match that 10-year tenure at No. 11.

But that won't be fast enough for supporters who view the reduction (like that of the top personal rate to 45%) as too timid to unleash entrepreneurial dynamism.

Sympathetic critics point out that lower tax will merely swell the large cash piles of large companies that can't find anything to invest it in. And hostile critics will point out that it's another shift of taxation from labour to capital, ultimately benefiting those wealthy enough to own stocks and shares.

Credit unease

Comparable criticisms are being thrown at "credit easing", the policy to reduce businesses' borrowing costs which the chancellor flagged last autumn and has now set in motion.

Whereas "quantitative easing" (QE) has mainly involved the Bank of England buying government debt, only reducing private sector credit costs indirectly, credit easing directly lowers costs for business borrowers by transferring risks from the banks that lend.

But even if the planned £20bn of credit easing is implemented in full, it is small compared to the scale of QE, and to the £84-121bn funding gap of which the government is warned in a report it commissioned on small-business finance.

And the banks in the scheme have made clear that it will not extend loans to firms that can't get them at the moment, only cheapen the credit of those already able to borrow.

Banks say that their difficulty expanding loans to business (which left them struggling to meet Project Merlin's £76bn target in 2011) is caused by a dearth of worthwhile loan applications, not any lack of desire to finance real-economy investment.

And this raises a serious question about the past three Budgets' macro-economic effect – what they have done to the "demand side", as distinct from the supply-side effects the Chancellor is keenest to emphasise.

A lesson ignored 

Osborne taunts his critics for their apparently absurd proposition that they could reduce the public debt faster by running a bigger fiscal deficit.

But in likening public finances to household finances, he ignores the way that higher deficits can indeed accelerate debt reduction by speeding up output and revenue recovery – a lesson ignored across Europe but on open display in the US. 

Osborne may complain he was unlucky to take over the public finances at a time of strain not experienced since the world wars and the inter-war slump. But his chancellorship is haunted by another legacy of the 2008 crash: a sweeping cull of investment banks, which traditionally lend to big businesses as well as underwriting their share issues, but which may now be fatally damaged.

Higher minimum capital requirements, and a long lull in corporate restructuring activity, were already threatening to undermine their business model.

The UK and US governments have now chosen to raise their capital costs still further by enforcing their legal separation from retail banking.

If - as seems increasingly likely - the once vibrant sector is reduced to Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and a handful of big players, the role of mobilising funds for long-term private investment will increasingly fall on government.

Osborne may be uneasy at moving the state's role beyond credit easing. But the "Green" Investment Bank, driven past the Treasury by Vince Cable, could soon be a model he'll have to stretch further if the colour of private-sector money keeps turning to red.

Alan Shipman is lecturer in economics at the Open University and a former financial journalist

Alan Shipman uncovers some of the things that will be missing from the chancellor's Budget speech on 21 March 

When delivering his 2012 Budget, George Osborne will ritually condemn the public debt he inherited from Labour predecessors, Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling.

But in preparing it, he will doubtless have cursed another feature of the Treasury template: the immensely complicated tax system through which modern chancellors try to top manage the economy.

Brown and Darling didn't just add a third tier of income tax (the 50p top rate on incomes above £150,000), which Osborne's back-benchers are expecting him to repeal.

They also took steps to replace various welfare benefits with tax credits, the intention being to reward those on lower incomes for working, rather than compensate them for not working.

Reducing incentive to work 

Though an effective incentive, tax credits are complicated to claim. Up to 20% of households miss out on their entitlement (thus keeping up the pressure to maintain child benefit, which gets through to more of those who need it, despite it also reaching many who don't).

They're also complicated to administer, especially when alteration to pay or hours changes people's entitlement within a tax year, forcing retrospective supplementation or clawback.

More worryingly for Britain's chances of escaping the recession, the means-testing of tax credits and other low-income benefits can reduce many people's incentives to take up jobs or work more hours.

Over a wide range of low incomes (£20-90/week in 2010/11) earning more pre-tax income makes no difference to post-tax income, because income support is withdrawn as earnings rise.

After a jump in post-tax income when tax credits start (above 16 hours per week in the present tax year), there's then an even wider range over which working longer, harder or smarter makes little difference to take-home pay – this time, because of working tax credit and housing benefit are withdrawn as earnings rise.

Poverty traps 

These extensive "flat spots", identified in part 2, chapter 4 of the Mirrlees Review of taxation published last year, could cause the wheels to fall off the back-to-work wagon, even if the chancellor's strategy starts to generate more jobs.

Such "poverty traps" are compounded by the eligibility assessment using household income.

This means that many (mostly women) whose partner is already in work can't take up a paid job, or earn more from one, without lifting their family (pre-tax) income above the threshold that reduces their entitlements.

The traps could be removed if means testing were ended, but that would mean much better-off households getting a share of the tax credit/benefit budget, which would look unfair, and wasteful, at a time when public spending is supposed to be reduced.

Current policy is moving the other way, through caps on entitlement even for those in most need, and a rise (from 16 to 24 after April) in the minimum hours a household must work to receive tax credits.

The new limits, notably on housing benefit entitlement, will lower the post-tax income plateau, or even make it slope downhill.

The universal credit

The coalition does, of course, have a grand plan to sweep away these anomalies: its universal credit (UC), first steps towards which will be taken in October 2013.

This will supplement low-paid households' incomes without the present detailed assessment (which raises administration cost and reduces take-up) and without the tapering that erodes incentives for additional work.

But UC has problems of its own, admitted in official Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) studies, and highlighted in recent assessments by leading charities.

As it will be available to all, including households well above the poverty line, it has to be set at low levels.

So some households will receive less in UC than they currently get from the credits and benefits it will replace.

While the DWP rejects Save the Children's claim that quarter of a million children already in poverty will be worse-off, its own calculations show that over a million households with children will lose out.

Unpleasant inheritance 

Overshadowing the chancellor’s script, as he proclaims the Budget's contribution to boosting the private sector and reviving British business, will be the murky connection between the benefit system and our much-vaunted "flexible labour market".

While unemployment (now 2.67m, 8.4% of the workforce) is a major cause of hardship, almost two-thirds of child poverty now occurs in households with parents in work, as was pointed out two years ago by the Institute for Public Policy Research.

Despite the minimum wage, many workers take home so little that the state must supplement their income to keep them afloat.

Much social welfare is actually corporate welfare: taxpayers' money being used to keep afloat businesses that can't, or won't, pay employees enough to live on.

Osborne won't put it that way, when he announces the latest changes to entitlements.

But with the spread of unpaid internships helping to push down minimum pay, it's another unpleasant Budgetary inheritance that won't go away.

Alan Shipman is lecturer in economics at the Open University and a former financial journalist

• Full coverage of the 2012 Budget on MSN UK Money

Alan Shipman argues that the chancellor shouldn't be annoyed at the risk of losing the UK's top credit rating – he's in excellent, and inevitable, company

Moody's threat to downgrade the UK's credit rating isn't just a reaction to the stalling of its national income growth since George Osborne became chancellor.

It also reflects the danger that many of the coalition government's actions to reverse the fiscal deficit, through lower public spending, will actually raise it in the long run and slow the reduction of national debt.

Increasing public-sector workers' pension contributions is intended to reduce the state's unfunded pension liabilities, one of the hidden costs that may make the "structural" deficit much higher than the already dire official calculations. But Exchequer cost may ultimately increase if more public employees now drop out of the scheme, and end up claiming the basic state pension.

Even without such a switch, the reforms' protections for lower earners means they will save little or no public money in the long run, according to the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies.

Similarly, steps to reduce the cost of tax credits – such as the 50% increase (from April) in the hours per week that an employee must work to receive them – will save taxpayers' money in the short term, but could lose it in the longer term if the affected families give up work, are forced to claim other benefits or abandon pension contributions.

The previous government's re-orientation of welfare from benefits to tax credits was premised on a permanent reduction in unemployment, which fell from a rate of 7.1% (2 million) in 1997 to 4.6% (1.4 million) in 2005. Its subsequent rise to 8.4% (2.7m) in December upsets the new system, and may undermine the proposed shift to a "universal" credit.
 
Even shifting the cost of higher education on to students isn't guaranteed to bring the targeted savings, since more UK universities than expected plan to charge the maximum £9,000 annual fee, pushing up the cost of state-funded bursaries to low-income students and of advancing loans to students – the return of which relies on increasingly uncertain graduate employment prospects, and will be further eroded by the scrapping of early repayment penalties.

The chancellor still insist that eurozone chaos, not his own budget tightening, has stalled the income growth needed to pay-down national debt.

But even if he avoids another recession, Osborne is up against some perilous long-term fiscal challenges. Having already been the lender-of-last-resor​t to an over-extended banking system, the government must now prepare to pick up other substantial bills from the private sector, including the costs of:

- Pensions, from households that have not saved for them and companies that cannot plug the holes in defined-benefit schemes

- Healthcare, which (as US experience shows) cannot be successfully transferred to private insurance schemes even in a higher-wage, lower-unemployment economy, and whose costs will inexorably rise as people live longer and need more expensive treatment. 

- An ageing and eventually declining population, with a permanently higher ratio of retired to economically active citizens, and long-term care needs that many families can't or won't undertake.

- Private Finance Initiative contracts, which shifted capital spending off the government's books when hospitals, schools, roads and other infrastructures were being built, but now mean a long-term drain of Treasury payments.

- Oil, gas and nuclear plant decommissioning, as the facilities that provided UK energy for the past half century reach their own extremely costly retirement age.

Fortunately for Osborne, these pressures are not unique to the UK, but are now felt by governments all round the world.

They explain why few governments have ever attained an AAA rating (not even Estonia, which ran a budget surplus last year and has virtually no public debt), and few have retained them after the past year's rounds of downgrades. Even the US, which prints the world's currency, was downgraded to long-term AA+, with negative outlook, by Moody's rival Standard & Poor’s (S&P) last August.

With so few top credits remaining, the US can still borrow virtually interest-free despite its lowest status. And any UK downgrade is unlikely to move its long-term bond yields much above their historic lows.

But S&P's verdict on America, based on the imminence of an "inflection point on the US population's demographics and other age-related spending drivers", sent a chilling note to all western finance ministers.

Globalisation creates pressure to reduce taxation (especially on mobile capital and labour), so that government tax receipts rise at a slower pace than national income. But demand for the key public services – healthcare, education, environmental remediation, public transport, policing – rises faster than national income. The result is an inevitable tendency to fiscal deficit, which isn't defused by efforts to privatise public services.

The only way out for governments is to ramp up taxes and bring the budget into surplus during times of economic growth, to set aside funds with which to combat the effects of subsequent downturn without borrowing too heavily.

But efforts to do this are undermined by the inevitable demand that any lasting fiscal surplus should be "given back to the private sector" through tax cuts. That was the fate of Bill Clinton's US budget surplus in the mid-1990s, and that of Gordon Brown in the mid-2000s.

There could have been another way out. Windfall gains from a natural-resource export boom have enabled various governments around the world to build up sovereign wealth funds, which are invested around the world and kept away from the general budget, to be discreetly drawn on when fiscal emergencies arise.

The UK had the chance to create such a fund when the North Sea made it an oil and gas exporter after 1979. Uniquely, it refused to do so, and instead used the oil wealth for an income-tax holiday.

Prudently saving that bonanza (which has regularly yielded up to £10bn tax revenue per year at today's prices since 1980, peaking at £13bn in 2008) would have provided a vital safeguard against the banking, pension and infrastructure liabilities now draining the Exchequer – and security for a cast-iron AAA rating.

Osborne may yet curse the Conservative chancellors who chose to turn the UK's liquid gold into fast-spent ready cash.

Alan Shipman is lecturer in economics at the Open University and a former financial journalist

With voters in the Iowa caucus having ensured this year's US elections have got off to a remarkable start, it is hard not to reflect on how the Republicans' long-winded campaign trail has seen so many candidates capture the conservative imagination and then fall rapidly out of sight.

In many ways it is a reminder of a new TV quiz in the United States, Who’s Still Standing?, which the TV network NBC described as "so unpredictable that it will make the ground move under your feet".

The floor beneath the Republican hopefuls has certainly opened up whenever they made a mistake, but only after becoming frontrunners or enjoying a surge of support against the favourite - and narrow winner in Iowa - Mitt Romney. The expectations of activists seem to be at odds with the reality of actual candidates.

One of the reasons Republican candidates have been treated so badly by fickle conservatives is their desire to see anyone but Romney triumph, which in turn demands impossible standards. Romney consistently polled around 20% throughout the campaign season. He ended up winning 24.5% of the vote in Iowa, exactly the same as Rick Santorum, who had been at 15% just a few days earlier. Ron Paul won 21.5%, almost exactly in line with the latest polls.

But what about the other candidates, and potential candidates, who seemed to fare so well early on? A look at their fortunes can tell us about the state of the GOP (Grand Old Party, as the Republican party is often called), but we also need to bear in mind that about a quarter of the voters who registered for the Iowa caucus were independents and Democrats. By some accounts many are younger Democrats inspired the kind of libertarian ideas put forward by Ron Paul.

Sarah Palin sensibly ruled herself out of this year's race to await the 2016 contest where Obama would be less of an issue and build her personal profile on Fox and other channels.

Tim Pawlenty withdrew after running short on political cash.

In the absence of a viable conservative, Michelle Bachmann posing as mawkish free marketeer and defender of the life ethic, managed to develop a warm relationship with the conservative base while also losing their active support. She ended up with just 5% of the vote in Iowa.

Spotting the weakness of such a candidate, Donald Trump, relentless self-publicist with a preoccupation with the US president's birth certificate, tested the waters briefly in 2011.

However, it was hard to tell whether he was promoting his candidacy or the next episode of The Apprentice. The failure to set up a GOP debate with Trump as the chair speaks volumes.

Rick Perry is photogenic and usually on-message on the trail but, as the debates revealed, he was surprisingly forgetful on the details, even though the governorship of Texas should have been a warning sign. It's a job where bold messages matter more on campaigns. His ability to forget the key departments of state he would like to abolish was more appropriate to a joke on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno than in a presidential debate.

Then, without blinking, desperately-seeking conservatives opted for Herman Cain's "999" tax solution (a 9% tax on companies, individuals and sales).

Thrust into the limelight, stories of affairs and possible sexual harassment left a sour aftertaste, along with tawdry images of where he waved his palm. Cain also prevaricated and produced some of the most convoluted foreign policy statements  just to appear to be different from Obama. Had he been pressed, he would probably have said that Bin Laden should have been shot from a different angle.

Despite polling 13% in Iowa, we shouldn't rule Newt Gingrich out yet. He has weathered barrages of abuse in the past, but his private conduct has been more difficult for the mainstream GOP to swallow than even he anticipated. His bold statements on child labour as a route out of poverty were a diversionary tactic from the more complicated political history in which he has been intimately involved.

Like Bill Clinton, he often seems to come back from the brink of unacceptability. It's a comparison with which I think he would be pleased, at least in terms of being a political survivor. Yet Gingrich's sudden adoption of the standpoint of candidate who would not use negative campaigning did not seem convincing.

Jon Huntsman is another talented candidate, but in the eyes of many conservatives he has been tainted by virtue of being Obama’s ambassador to China.

So that still leaves Romney, Paul and Santorum: the top three in Iowa. Next week New Hampshire will get its turn to pass judgment on a Republican Mormon with fidelity, a steadfast libertarian of the Austrian School and an uncompromising evangelical Christian.

Who will be the next to fall through the hole in the floor?

Mark J Smith is author of Environment and Citizenship (2008) and Responsible Politics (2012) as well as 'The intellectual roots of the Big Society' and 'Environmental Responsibility and the Big Society' in Marina Stott (ed.) The Big Society Challenge, London, Keystone/Locality

Mark J Smith examines why social, economic and political problems in the UK are being blamed on the most vulnerable.

There is a cruel streak in contemporary politics, a meanness that has not often been so explicit. Since the youth riots of summer 2011 in London and elsewhere, the parade of hateful and vitriolic media messages have been ramped up in many ways. Even strikers defending their pensions should, in the words of Jeremy Clarkson on the early evening BBC One Show ‘be taken outside and executed in front of their families’.

There had already been a continual parade of welfare scroungers, such as the stereotypical couple out of work or on incapacity benefits with double digit children in council housing in central London where notional property prices are highest, in the Daily Mail, The Sun and Daily Express.

However, the characterisation of the young rioters and benefit claimants has surpassed all expectations.

Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail, portrayed the riots as the politics of envy from ‘feral inner city waifs and strays’ otherwise engaged in grand theft auto, dope and alcoholic consumption. He also argued that instead of ‘clubbing these looters like baby seals’, the police held back to just watch plunder and arson.

Now a Social Attitudes Survey has confirmed what I’ve suspected for a number of years, that there is an increasing callous disregard for the poor in the UK which sometimes crosses over into hatred.

We see this in comedy through the portrayal of poor people as hapless (feckless even), narcissistic and purely self-interested. Take Wayne and Waynetta Slob, for instance, or many of the characters of Little Britain. The humour behind such stereotypes is the kind that confirms prejudices, amplifies expectations and provides a neat fit with the caricatures of poverty found in the tabloids.

The survey, conducted by the National Centre for Social Research, has been widely celebrated in the conservative broadsheets as an indication of a seismic shift in values. Janet Daley in the Daily Telegraph, highlights that only 35 per cent now support a redistribution of wealth and 54 per cent consider unemployment benefits too generous. At a time when many households have been affected by higher taxes and frozen pay, the extent of such sentiments can be seen as a knee-jerk reaction to belt tightening by the majority.

The other elements of the survey do, however, indicate an alteration of mood from the attitudes of the late 1990s and early 2000s when a New Labour government promised to rectify decades of underfunding and a lack of investment in the infrastructures of a modern economy. The Liberal Democrats managed to increase their vote on the back of the sentiment that tax rises purely to boost spending on education and health coincided with the views of most UK citizens. The supporters of such measures have dropped by roughly half to 31 per cent. In addition, the line between the state’s responsibility and that of private citizens also seems to moving. Unemployment, homelessness, educational failure and even child poverty are increasingly regarded as the product of personal difficulties, not as social problems to be solved.

One key feature of the survey is that 63 per cent blame child poverty on the incapacities of their parents, only drug dependence is seen as a more important factor.

Condescension turned to rage after the summer riots when hapless hoodies raided businesses for personal benefit or for the kick of confronting the police. They were certainly hapless, if not incompetent criminals, for many were easily identifiable afterwards. Ultimately, 1,715 people appeared in court and 315 were convicted by November, with many receiving disproportionately longer sentences compared to those not connected with the disturbance.

All of this was egged on by the UK’s political leaders. As with child poverty, arranging a disturbance is also attributed to the failure of personal responsibility of the parents of those involved with a number of councils planning to evict the families of the convicted from council owned properties. Even well-behaved members of Occupy in London have been subject to a range of questionable attacks as dirty hippies, unsanitary protestors despoiling the streets of London and workshy youthes who should get a job or go back to college.

In an era of major public spending cuts, even the traditional distinctions between deserving and undeserving poor are crumbling. Being poor now seems to mean being a drain on the public purse not being vulnerable and in need of help and protection.

Make no mistake, the endless line up of folk devils invoked, from feral yobs to workshy parents, will continue to diminish tolerance and this will be given a stronger material basis as more people are made unemployed and disposable incomes continue to fall.

Mark J Smith examines whether the rest of Europe will lose patience with David Cameron's brinkmanship.

Britain was late to join the European project and many of its politicians were often reluctant to agree to the transformation from an economic community to single market and the European Union.

In practice, they tended to use other nations' desire to move forward as an opportunity to engage in diplomatic brinkmanship, to extract concessions that have resulted in the UK being on the edge of the EU, both literally and figuratively.

The most famous illustration, and one which many conservatives are keen to emulate, at least rhetorically, was the ‘handbagging’ of Europe by Mrs Thatcher over the budgetary rebate between 1979 and 1984. This so-called victory of the national interest helped pave the way for conservative acceptance of the Single Market Act, three years later, with the aim of creating the market by 1992. The hope was for a free trade zone and more deregulated European market without elaborate political institutions.

At this point, the movement towards European political integration became a severe problem for the Conservatives. John Major’s election win on a narrow majority made it easy for backbench rebellions to cause maximum problems for government policy. The UK has also opted out of a number of important European initiatives in the past, most notably the Schengen Convention on relaxed border controls and the European currency system.

The Maastricht Treaty (1992), led to a series of internal factional disputes that helped to destroy the Conservative Party’s reputation for competence. Major, as his New Labour successors from 1997, however, did maintain that they were committed to being in Europe and find ways of influencing events through cooperation and integrating their foreign policies and security programmes.